


into smoke

by heartsinhay



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-06
Updated: 2014-01-06
Packaged: 2018-01-07 16:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1122189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartsinhay/pseuds/heartsinhay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Sasha dreamed about Mikasa, and one time she only thought she did.</p>
            </blockquote>





	into smoke

1

 

  
"I dreamed about you last night," Sasha says during warm-up. The recruits of the 104th are working on 3DMG training today, shifting weight to different parts of their bodies and learning how to balance in midair. Mikasa, as expected, is perfect at this kind of exercise, knowing just how to lean to the left so that all her weight rests on her left hip, or the right angle to tilt backwards to simulate a fall. Sasha, on the other hand, is worried about tangling herself up in her wires.

 

"What did you dream about?" Mikasa asks. She adjusts Sasha's posture lightly as they launch, with a barely perceptible push of her hand, and Sasha can feel her whole wobbly stance balance.

 

"We all had to attack giant watermelon," says Sasha, "To feed these refugees and stray animals. They rolled over people, and they could shoot their seeds, you know, from holes in their hides—is it hides or skins?"

 

"Skins." 

 

"Right, skins. And those seeds turned into stars, and _they_ started fighting us, too. If anyone opened their mouth to yell, the seeds'd fly inside, and—" Sasha's gesture nearly flips her over, making the wires of her 3DMG vibrate with the tension of keeping her in the air, and she has to grab at her hooks, trying to find equilibrium. Mikasa watches impassively, almost perfectly still.

 

"Anyway, you were there fighting the watermelon, too."

 

Instructor Shadis signals a move to the next position, and Sasha, with difficulty, lets her head drop until she's completely upside down, the end of her ponytail just barely brushing the floor. Mikasa considers Sasha's dream as she mirrors her pose, her own, shorter, hair dangling in midair. Blood rushes to Sasha's temples. She wonders what'd happen if she had a nosebleed like this, whether or not the blood would flow back up her nostril and into her brain.

 

"Did I win?"

 

"Obviously," says Sasha. She can't imagine Mikasa losing, especially not to a watermelon. Not even in her dreams.

 

"Good."

 

Mikasa levers herself completely upright (how, Sasha can't quite tell, because all it looks like she's doing is tilting her hips a little) and detaches her 3DMG herself, dropping lightly to the ground. Technically, Shadis hasn't signaled yet, but that's only because it takes everyone other than Mikasa a little longer to get into position. The exercise ends, officially, when a recruit goes through all the motions perfectly, so as far as Mikasa is concerned, it was over the first time she tried.

 

She walks over to Sasha, and, with great solemnity, pokes Sasha in the side. Instantly, Sasha's pose destabilizes, making her swing wildly and spin back and forth. By the time she manages to stop moving, she's so dizzy that she can barely fix Mikasa's unrepenting face with her best distressed and accusing stare.

 

"What was that for?"

 

Mikasa shrugs.

 

"It's better that that happens now instead of when you're fighting..."

 

Mikasa's voice trails off and she looks away, covering her nose with her scarf. When Sasha's fighting a Titan, she means. When they really have to fight, because they're not children anymore, they're soldiers, and in a real fight, Sasha won't be able to afford to make mistakes. She'd probably die if Wall Rose fell tomorrow. They all would, even Shadis and all their other instructors. Maybe even Mikasa.

 

She never gets to finish that thought, because MIkasa swipes at Sasha's ponytail with her foot to get her attention.

 

"When you're fighting a watermelon," she says, with finality, and leaves.

 

 

2

 

 

"No," says the rabbit who looks like Mikasa. It looks like Mikasa because its fur is white on its body, but black from its forehead to the tips of its ears, and red for a strip around its neck and another patch on its chest.

 

"No," it tells her, and then, "Fight! Fight!"

 

Sasha pauses mid-chew, still holding a drumstick up near her mouth. She's eating a chair made of chicken, and sitting in the middle of the mess hall, on the floor. She hopes nobody sat on it. Not that she'd stop eating it, if somebody did.

 

"Fight," says rabbit-Mikasa, anguish twisting her voice. Her feet thump agitatedly, muscles coiling and uncoiling for— for what? She keeps saying "fight", but she's a rabbit. Rabbits don't fight. Rabbits run, and they burrow and they hide away.

 

"Fight," says rabbit-Mikasa, again, and Sasha looks at her and realizes that Mikasa isn't talking about herself. Mikasa's talking about  _her_.

 

The drumstick shifts into a sword, and the back of the chair into a 3DMG. She puts it on. The belt is bone and the wires are sinew; the straps that wind aorund her legs strips of crispy chicken skin. Sasha throws out her wires and flies, but halfway through she realizes that she's swinging into the hungry mouths of displaced farmers— no, a Titan's gaping maw, no—

 

Sasha's eyes open with a jolt, and, after a few minutes of tossing and turning, sits up. She swings her legs off the bunk, careful not to wake Mikasa below. She'll go for a walk, maybe, or just to the toilets and back. When she was a child, she used to run until she got tired enough to fall asleep, but her muscles ache too hard from today and yesterday and last week's training for her to even contemplate exercise.

 

She's pulling her boots on when she hears it: "Fight", the sound barely a whisper, coming from Mikasa's bunk. She looks over.

 

Mikasa's thrown off her covers, and her fist strains weakly at the air. It looks like she threw them off in her sleep, and, though her face is in its usual, neutral, expression, her scarf's fallen onto the floor. She's having a nightmare, kind of like Sasha just did, but it looks like hers is worse.

 

She's not going to wake her up. Mikasa'd be really embarrassed, and maybe she'd accidentally start fighting Sasha instead, and the trainees get little enough sleep already. Maybe she'll casually mention dreams tomorrow, to see if Mikasa's willing to tell her anything, but... Even though they're friends (or at least Sasha thinks so), if Mikasa was dreaming about something really horrible, she's the kind of person wouldn't want to say, and if she was dreaming about something ordinary, it wouldn't matter.

 

Anyway, there's no use speculating. Sasha picks up the scarf, and, folding it, slips it under Mikasa's head. She draws the covers back over Mikasa, and moves her hand so that, even if she thrashes around in her sleep, her blankets will stay safely on. 

 

"Fight," she says, brushing Mikasa's hair behind her ear, and, all throughout the night, even when Sasha comes back from the toilet and hoists herself up to stare unblinkingly at the ceiling until she falls asleep, Mikasa's dreams are too peaceful for her to reply.

 

 

3

 

 

"We are gathered today," says Instructor Shadis, banging his gavel, "To determine whether the allegations that Private Ackerman lacks a sense of humor are correct. This is a military court, and the defense and witnesses are advised to observe proper military decorum. If they can."

 

"Don't worry," Sasha tells Mikasa, who looks really pretty in a white dress and pink lace, even though the latter clashes with her scarf, "I'll get us through this."

 

"The prosecutor," says Shadis, "Will be me, as will the judge." He twirls his gavel menacingly, and Sasha makes sure to push the potato slices she snuck into the court room further into the slots for her 3DMG blades.

 

"Um," she tells Mikasa, who places an encouraging hand on hers, "Maybe you should worry."

 

"First witness," calls Shadis, and Sasha takes the stand.

 

"Um," she says, "Mikasa always tries to taunt me! She takes my bread away and pretends that she'll give me food, but goes back on her word just to see me in distress. And she likes telling people that things are my fault, even when they aren't, and she makes fun of me all the time. Like when my stance is wrong, she'll make sure I trip and find out, or she'll come into the kitchen and catch me before I can steal any food."

 

"Denying a girl her food," says Shadis, throwing his gavel up and catching it in midair, "Are you sure she's not just mean?"

 

"N-no!" Sasha yells, "That's not it! That's not it at all! I know a lot of people who think Mikasa's cruel because she doesn't try to be friendly to them, or that she's not really like a person because she's so strong, but that's not it! Even though she makes fun of me, it's not in a mean way. She makes sure I know my stance is wrong because she wants me to be able to fight well and survive, and she's really kind and always saves people when she can. She always saves me."

 

"Irrelevant, Blouse. Second witness."

 

The second witness is Eren, who loudly proclaims that the trial is a waste of time that could be better spent killing Titans.

 

"Sure, Mikasa has a sense of humor," he says, "I guess. When we were kids, she always got me in trouble for things. I'm pretty sure she laughed a couple times, too. Why does this matter, anyway? She doesn't need to make jokes to kill Titans. And she's going to be really good at that, but I'm still going to kill more than she does, even if it kills me. I'm going to kill them all!"

 

Sasha's starting to get a little nervous. Shadis's witnesses are all other members of the Trainee Corps, and they have no compunction calling Mikasa an "emotionless witch", or "frigid", or "monster", and all other sorts of awful things, and they aren't as unprofessional and off-topic as her own. She wasn't convincing at all, and Eren started yelling halfway through the cross-examination, and Armin got nervous and kept qualifying his statements with "I think" and "I'm not sure".

 

"Mikasa does express amusement," he says, "I think. It's subtle, but she sinks a little into her scarf and lets out a huff of breath, and if you look closely, you can notice. I-I mean, even though I'm just a trainee, I'm her childhood friend, so I should know. Besides, even little kids think Sasha falling down is funny."

 

"Is that all you have, Blouse?" Shadis asks, and Sasha sees red.

 

"Mikasa's a good person!" she yells, "And she does too have a sense of humor, and she's  _funny_ , too, but you're a jerk who won't even take half a potato! It sounds like you're putting her on trial, and that's stupid, because Mikasa's really strong and really kind and, and—"

 

"And?"

 

"And, it's  _my_ dream," concludes Sasha, triumphantly, "So what I say goes."

 

The courtroom melts away, replaced by the dense mountain forests Sasha used to call home. Eren and Armin and Shadis and the other trainees all melt away, too, and eventually it's just her and Mikasa in the woods.

 

"You saved me," says Mikasa, softly, and when she turns to Sasha, Sasha fists her hand in her scarf, pulls her closer, lets Mikasa raise her arms around Sasha's neck and tug at her ponytail—

 

She wakes up to a sharp pain in her shin. The first thing she sees is her table, and then the corner of her notebook, upon which Mikasa has written  _You fell asleep in class again_ in neat, careful letters.  _Thanks for waking me up_ , Sasha scribbles back, and then,  _Can I borrow your notes_? Mikasa nods in acquiescence. She really is kind, Sasha concludes, and, later, when Connie bursts into giggles at the sight of a loaf of bread doodled on Sasha's cheek, Sasha imagines Shadis forced to acknowledge, quite definitely, that Mikasa does have a sense of humor after all.

 

 

4

 

 

 She has to try and get closer.

 

Sasha's chasing Mikasa through a field, one that looks like what she imagines the fields around Wall Maria did. She isn't sure what she'll do after she catches her, or why it's so important that they touch: only that she needs to reach her, somehow.. Sasha's fast, one of the fastest in the 104th, but, no matter how hard she runs, she can't seem to catch her.

 

She will, though. She has to. Sasha leans into her run, almost leaping with every stride, the crops in the fields tickling her shins. Maybe this is Mikasa's hometown. Maybe these are the crops Mikasa planted. Maybe the important thing is not to catch her but to understand where she comes from. Sasha stops and looks around, at the warm sunlight and gentle breeze. Armin once told them all about a huge, huge lake that went past the horizons, and that's what the fields look like now: an endless expanse of vegetation so thick that Sasha could get lost in it. It's all golden, made almost radiant by the sunlight, and out of the corner of her eye she catches a glimpse of red.

 

 _Mikasa._ Sasha turns, already grasping at Mikasa's sleeve, so she can tug her close, fall into her and watch her eyes widen in anticipation and tilt her head upward so they can—

 

Mikasa turns into dust.

 

"And after that, no matter how many times I caught up to her, she dissolved the moment we touched," Sasha tells Connie. Both of them have already finished lunch, and Sasha's already licked the bowl, so they have a little bit of time to figure out what that dream meant.

 

"That's weird," says Connie.

 

"I know. And it was so annoying, because I kept on getting so close to—to—"

 

"To what?"

 

"I don't know," Sasha says miserably, slumping down onto the table. Connie doesn't look like he understands that much, but at least he's patient and he's trying to be sympathetic. That's what she likes about him. Most of the other trainees'd make a stupid joke, or try to guess what she was thinking before she figured it out herself, but Connie tries to listen. Mikasa would, too, even though she'd make fun of her afterwards, just to make sure that everything was normal. Maybe Christa would, too, because Christa's an angel.

 

"What don't you know?"

 

"I just told you, Con— Oh."

 

Sasha nearly chokes on air, because Mikasa Ackerman sits down next to her. She put her laundry in with Eren's again today, Sasha notices. Her uniform has been scrubbed nearly clean of any stains, and it fits her almost as if it'd been tailored. Even her scarf looks cleaner.

 

"What were you talking about?"

 

"About... the cook today. She, uh,  acted like she was really aware of where I was, and where the, um, food was, and I didn't get to take anything."

 

"That's probably a good thing," Mikasa says, and while she isn't looking, Connie raises an eyebrow and gives Sasha the look that means  _What's all this about?._ Sasha shakes her head ever so slightly, and gives him the look that means she'll talk to him later. She doesn't think she wants Mikasa to know about her dreams, at least not quite yet.

 

 

5

 

 

They're underwater this time.

 

Sasha's been dreaming about Mikasa a lot lately. She dreams about hunting with her and being hunted with her, about dancing village country dances and tunneling deep underground. Even about being Garrison together, building walls side by side. Once she dreamed about getting married to Mikasa. It was a marriage of convenience, mostly because Mikasa was the heir to a foreign throne, and they had to get married before the foreigners could send aid, but, in that dream, Sasha remembers being happy.  She hasn't told Mikasa about any of the dreams. She doesn't know why, but the dreams feel like something sweet and secret, like candy bars she has to hoard in her shirt pocket for fear of having to share.

 

They're underwater this time, or, more accurately, under soup. They float in liquid, bobbing around chunks of carrot and potato and bone, their 3DMG slowly rusting in the water. Out of the corner of her eye, Sasha can see something large and crystalline slowly dissolving as it floats: a single grain of salt. Her grappling hooks manage to latch onto a large leaf of cabbage, but when she tries to use the cabbage to swing up towards the surface (legs together and center of gravity low, like she learned in class), she only ends up pulling the cabbage downwards. This isn't not going to work. This isn't even the point. The point is...

 

She's forgotten. Sasha does a slow flip, peering at all chunks of food in the soup she can see in the dim, watery light, and that's when she finally sees Mikasa, who's propelling herself through the water with long, powerful kicks. She swims directionless, bubbles trailing in her wake, her scarf and hair fluttering with every movement.  The moment their eyes meet, Sasha finally knows what she's here to do.

 

She launches her grappling hooks at Mikasa, letting the other girl catch the ends of her wires, and Mikasa slowly reels her in. Sasha turns her body so she'll be streamlined in the water, kicks so she'll go faster, and soon enough they are pressed almost flush against each other, Mikasa's hands on Sasha's harness.

 

 _Oh_ , thinks Sasha, as she runs her hands through Mikasa's hair,  _so this is what the dreams were all about_. Mikasa hooks her thumbs through Sasha's harness. Sasha places a hand on Mikasa's cheek.

 

Their lips meet. Sasha wakes up.

 

She doesn't look at Mikasa when she climbs out of bed, and she's quiet as she creeps out the door. It's almost sunrise, and she has to go tell Connie that she has a crush.

 

 

 

+1

 

 

 

"Sasha. Sasha, wake up. Sasha. You're going to be late."

 

Her eyes blink open. Mikasa stares down at her, unblinking, and Sasha yawns. She starts stretching— her muscles hurt, just a little—and freezes.

 

"Trost's wall fell," she says.

 

"Yes."

 

"I joined the Survey Corps," she says.

 

"Yes."

 

"Am I dreaming?"

 

"No."

 

"I thought I was dreaming. I wish I was dreaming. I-I nearly froze up against that Titan, and I joined the Survey Corps, and—Mikasa, I'm going to die!"

 

"You aren't," says Mikasa, "New recruits have a survival rate of 20%."

 

"There's only a twenty percent chance I'll live, then."

 

"That's not it. Because I'll be there, your chances are a hundred percent. I'm strong, Sasha. Really strong. Strong enough to protect you." Mikasa's hand is on Sasha's shoulder, her brow furrowed, her voice low and intent. She sat down on the bed to wake Sasha up, her weight sinking into the blankets. Sasha could call her beautiful, in her pressed uniform and red scarf, but she's more than that. She's Mikasa, the number one recruit, the one who corrects Sasha's stance and makes sly, subtle jokes when it's just her and Sasha, eating together in the mess, the woman who was willing to face down a whole city full of Titans on her own.

 

"If you don't fight, you can't win," Sasha says, quietly.

 

"What?"

 

"That's how your speech went, wasn't it? If you don't fight, you can't win, so you might as well fight."

 

"Eren said it better the first time," Mikasa mumbles, looking away, and something quavers in Sasha's chest at the light flush on her cheeks, a flutter, weak, but there.

 

"The Titans'll try and break down Wall Rose again," she says, "And then they'll go for Sina, so I'd have to face them anyway, even if I joined the MP, and if we don't stop them now, there won't be enough— there won't be enough anything, and I'd rather die fighting than starving."

 

Mikasa nods, once, and motions for Sasha to stand. She slept in her uniform last night, so all she needs to do is smooth it and strap on her 3DMG. Mikasa hands Sasha her harness wordlessly, and a piece of bread.

 

"Hey," says Sasha, as if she just thought of it, "It's not that bad. There's probably some really good food still outside Rose!"

 

She winks, and Mikasa smiles—a smile, not a smirk, unhidden by her scarf—and suddenly Sasha's pressed back against the bed, Mikasa's lips against hers, the sheaths for their blades clanking together. Mikasa kisses like someone who learned to do it from sex education lecture Shadis gave them second year of training, solid pressure and tentative movement, but she learns quickly from Sasha's example.  _A prodigy_ , Sasha thinks, wildly,  _Worth a hundred soldiers_ , and then Mikasa decides to experiment with tongue and Sasha thinks nothing at all.

 

They kiss like they are under soup, time slowed down in counterpoint to their fast-beating hearts. It's nothing like a dream. It's everything that she dreamed of.

 

"Am I dreaming?" Sasha asks, the moment they part. Mikasa gives her a flat look and pinches her cheek, hard, and the sharp pain proves that Sasha is awake.

 

"If you're dreaming, then I'm dreaming too," she says, "And I'm not."

 

"We—um, what we just did—that only ever happens in my dreams, you know."

 

"Then let's keep dreaming," Mikasa says, practically, and leans into Sasha once more.

 

They're interrupted, eventually, by Armin's timid knock on the door. Mikasa pulls away from Sasha looking so irritated that Sasha offers her half of the bread in consolation, and they eat together as Sasha hastily pulls on her 3DMG. They'll be a little late this morning, but it's not so late that Armin can't talk them out of latrine duty, and, besides, Connie and Jean are bound to get lost on the way and they won't be the only ones. They'll support the Survey Corps, and they'll face down the Titans, and, together, they will dream.


End file.
